Do you go to the gym nearly every day and work out hard? Do you also work at a computer most of the day?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, let me ask you one more important question: Are you NOT seeing any fat loss?

If so, there’s one thing you’re probably not aware of that’s sabotaging all your workouts: SITTING!

Every Hour You Sit Cancels Out Some of The Effects of Your Workouts

A groundbreaking new study from the Mayo Clinic showed that if you go for a morning run for an hour, every hour of sitting you do during the rest of day erases 8% of the benefit of that workout!

If you do an hour of less intense exercise than a fast run, every hour you sit during the rest of the day erases a whopping 16% of the benefit of that hour of exercise.

Let’s make this into a real-world scenario so it really sinks in…

Let’s say you go to the gym 7 days per week for an hour of a spin class, a hot yoga class, a group exercise class, some light weight lifting, or to go on the cardio machines.

The rest of the day, you work a desk job where you sit for 8 hours. Then you sit in your car another hour each day. Let’s say you sit at the breakfast, lunch, and dinner tables for another couple of hours total. Then after dinner, you sit on the couch for another couple of hours.

Many of us are sitting 10-15 hours of the day!

What Does This Really Mean? It means that you’re cancelling out all your hard work in the gym!

Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say you you did a super intense CRAZY hour-long workout, and then you sat only 10 hours that day.

10 hours x 8% loss = 80%

You just lost 80% of the benefit of that workout.

Now… let’s do a less generous calculation.

Let’s take someone who does only a moderate intensity hour-long workout (still 7 days per week). And this person works a desk job where they sit for 12 hours of the day.

12 hours x 16% loss = 192% loss

This means that…

EVEN IF YOU ARE DOING AN HOUR LONG WORKOUT EVERYDAY, IF YOU SIT FOR 12 HOURS OF THE DAY, YOU ARE REGRESSING–IN BOTH YOUR HEALTH AND BODY COMPOSITION.

What’s The Take-Home Message Here?

Stop focusing on whether you’re doing p90x or Crossfit or the latest “afterburn” interval workout. Instead, start concerning yourself with keeping total daily sitting under 4 hours (under 2 hours if you really want to step things up), and move your body as often as possible throughout the day.

I’m not talking about any sort of strenuous “exercise”–I’m talking about NOT SITTING, and doing slow gentle, totally non-strenuous movement near-constantly throughout the day. (Note that I break down the 6 levels of movement habits associated with each type of body–from obese person to fitness model ripped–in my program Forever Fat Loss Formula.)

This not only will allow you to actually reap the metabolic benefits from the workouts you’re doing (instead of losing all the benefits), but will also have far-reaching impacts on improving your overall health, energy level, vitality, and overall metabolic function.

This is not just an “optional” strategy for health or fat loss–this is an ESSENTIAL requirement for normal healthy cellular and metabolic function.

Start with that. Then–and only then–worry about your workout routine.

____________________

References:

Kulinski et al. Association Between Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Accelerometer-Derived Physical Activity and Sedentary Time in the General Population. Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

[…] 2. NEAT is the foundation for good metabolic health and body composition. Increase gentle movement/NEAT (and DECREASE sitting time, and stationary time) as much as possible each day. ONLY once you’re doing #1 above should you then even worry about whether you’re doing cardio vs. weights vs. intervals vs. whatever else. Why? Because without ample NEAT each day, you’re mostly just spinning your wheels, since sitting time will undo most of the metabolic benefits from your workouts. (See here if you want to read more on that research.) […]

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